United Cuts JFK-IAD Service, Effective October 25, 2014

Even I am not too old to remember when New York Kennedy was once a United focus city, with service to Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. JFK was also once the home of UA1, United’s (and PanAm’s) former around-the-world service from New York – London – Delhi – Hong Kong – Los Angeles – New York that ended after 9/11. For the last several years, though, United’s presence at JFK has been a shadow of what it once was and on October 25, 2014, UA will end service to Washington Dulles, leaving only service to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

On the surface, the decision makes perfect sense – JFK is small United station with mostly origin/destination (non-stop) transcontinental traffic and across town is Newark Liberty, a fortress Continental United hub. Most routing rules between LAX/SFO and Washington do not even allow routing via JFK, so this was just a feeder flight to get travelers down to/from United’s other east coast hub, Washington Dulles.

And yet, I will second-guess United here. United is not merely a stand-alone airline, but a member of the Star Alliance. While those member carriers still compete among themselves (joint ventures excepted), there is at least a theoretical degree of cooperation and note the Star Carriers that service New York Kennedy that do not serve Dulles:

Singapore

SWISS

Asiana

EVA

LOT

Air India

EgyptAir

Eliminating the option for one-stop Star Alliance service from Washington via Kennedy may force more people onto United flights, but this is no victory for consumers, especially those loyal to Star Alliance. Newark has SWISS and Air India, but none of the others listed above.

It is a pain to make the terminal change at JFK (since UA shares its terminal with Iberia and British Airways, not Star parters), but at least its an option – especially if you are traveling on award tickets, where space out of JFK can often be better than IAD or EWR.

I’ve actually flown between Dulles and Kennedy several times over the years on United, and for New York City-based travelers, getting to Kennedy is easier than LaGuardia or Newark (at least if you are using public transport).

The End of Premium Service?

United runs premium service (p.s.) between Los Angeles/San Francisco and JFK that offers a two-cabin configuration on a 757-200 with a larger business class cabin comprised of lie-flat BusinessFirst (Continental style) seats. Competing with American, Delta, Virgin America, and JetBlue (all but Virgin American offering lie-flat beds), United competes for the business of the rich and famous who are willing to shell out a little bit more for the extra comfort.

But does this latest cutback spell the end for JFK altogether? Might the remaining p.s. flights be on the chopping block next?

United conceivably could move the p.s. fights to Newark, but I cannot imagine the sort of client willing to pay top-dollar for these tickets who would be okay with flying into Newark. Thus, as long as the routes remain profitable I am optimistic that United will continue to serve these premium routes.

Let’s face it, though: the p.s. soft product has deteriorated over the last several years and although it is still by far the best domestic service available (hence no free complimentary upgrades on these routes), Delta, American, and now JetBlue offer an arguably stronger product on the route (there is no debate that AA does on its new A321s). And Team Continental has not served JFK in years – it cannot be downplayed that Houston is still running this airline and has expressed open disdain for the way legacy United was run.

Route cuts are never a good thing and there is no indication that UA will be filling the slots with other routes, such as increased capacity on p.s. routes, so for now we can only count down the days until UA gets even smaller at JFK.

About Author

Matthew

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he
travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 120
countries over the last decade. Working both in the aviation industry
and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in the New York
Times, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, BBC, Fox News,
CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Al Jazeera, Toronto Star, and on NPR. Studying
international relations, American government, and later obtaining a
law degree, Matthew has a plethora of knowledge outside the travel
industry that leads to a unique writing perspective. He has served in
the United States Air Force, on Capitol Hill, and in the White House.
His Live and Let's Fly blog shares the latest news in the airline
industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs and promotions, and
detailed reports of his worldwide travel. His writings on
penandpassport.com offer more general musings on life from the eyes of a frequent traveler. He also founded awardexpert.com, a
highly-personalized consulting service that aids clients in the
effective use of their credit card points and frequent flyer miles.
Clients range from retirees seeking to carefully use their nest egg of
points to multinational corporations entrusting Matthew with the
direction and coordination of company travel.

20 Comments

To say JFK is more convenient for anyone living in Manhattan is an outright falsehood. LGA takes less time, every time now that the M60 has become a Select Bus and the Q70 has nonstop service to the Jackson Heights subway station with connection to e,f,r and 7 trains.

OK but who in their right mind would connect IAD-JFK-Eurasia arriving in T7 on UA and departing from T4 or T1 on the carriers mentioned? Particularly if UA is flying 50 seaters on the short hop?

Singapore is only on JFK-FRA, which is flown 4 daily on UA/LH from IAD. Swiss flies ZRH which is flown nonstop by UA from IAD. For LOT to Poland, FRA is a much better hub with extensive coverage of regional Poland. IAD-FRA-WAW is much better than IAD-JFK-WAW. Same logic for Egypt Air with better connections via FRA and even TK IAD-IST-CAI.

UA serves EWR-BOM/DEL so Air India at JFK connections are a moot point. If anything AI also has EWR. And quite honestly with carriers like BA, EK, QR, EY, AF, KL, LH in IAD no one is flying AI unless the fares are rock bottom.

EVA is better served over the SFO hub.

If anything, the customer experience is better now that UA is reducing 50 seaters and impractical connections between opposite terminals at JFK.

Dude, get over it. Your passive aggressiveness towards the merger is getting old and repetitive. We get it, you’re not happy with the merger. But irrelevant of the merger, the airline industry today is not what it was five years ago and that’s across the board, not just United.

As you so eloquently pointed out, the flight was only feed traffic into IAD and not from IAD. With only 200 seats a day, this is hardly a loss and we have yet to see what they’ll do with the slots. If they beef up SFO/LAX, that that would overall be a win.

I doubt PS will go anywhere, there is still enough corporate contract load driving those flights and that is really what supports those flights. Does AA have a better product, absolutely, but they also have the newest fleet and that is just how the fish jump over each other. The Delta product is mixed, if you get on the 763s, it is a better product, but the 752s are on par.

Is the service what it was five years ago? No and it never will be, nor will any of the others for that matter…

I flew the old Pan Am service from JFK to DEL way, WAY back in 1987, though the routing was a little different. It went JFK-FRA-Riyadh-DEL. I was 9 years old at the time, but I remember that pretty much the entire trip was star-crossed. To start off with, our TA messed up our tickets, so my mom (with me in tow) had to drive all the way to San Francisco to pick them up personally. On the way to India, the plane had a mechanical problem in FRA, so we were delayed about 6 hours. I remember then frantically running through DEL to catch an Indian Airlines domestic flight to MAA – only to find (much to our relief, actually) that that flight was also delayed 7 hours because the pilot didn’t show up for work. While we were in India, Pan Am screwed up our reservations somehow, so they could only fly 3 of us home as scheduled. My siblings took those tickets, and me, mom, and dad had to stay an extra 2 weeks. We do eventually get home, only to find that Pan Am had lost 3 of our bags. Miraculously, the showed up about a month and a half later, albeit with several items broken inside.

Just goes to show, as much as we complain about things like seat pitch, and about how great air travel was in the past, some things just never were any better. At least today, I can get to Chennai with only one stop, and can play Bejeweled on the IFE all the way…

If you like LIRR to JFK, then there is no appreciable difference with NJ Transit to Newark.

As for “United conceivably could move the p.s. fights to Newark, but I cannot imagine the sort of client willing to pay top-dollar for these tickets who would be okay with flying into New Jersey,” Huh?
Teterboro Airport is very popular with extremely rich people. A car service from Newark to Midtown isn’t any longer than JFK to Midtown. New Jersey isn’t some boogeyman.

Kind of like United killing my beloved BWI-IAD flight (jetstream 32) the week before 9/11. That used to let them compete in the Baltimore market through their Dulles hub. And it got me [who lived not far from Dulles] 2 extra segments each way, an earlier check-in time for upgrades, and significantly less expensive tickets. I wonder why that didn’t work for United? 😀

What would make sense is for more star alliance carriers to fly nonstop to EWR especially on routes that won’t have direct competition with United (i.e. EWR-TPE on EVA, EWR-ICN on Asiana, EWR-WAW on LOT, etc.); thus helping the feed to UA regional flights in the northeast.

@Joey: I agree, and if EWR had nicer facilities (not that JFK or LGA is great by a longshot) and had PATH train service or something a little faster into Manhattan, I think there would be no problem with the airport, but I dread taking the monorail to EWR Rail Station and then waiting for NJ Transit right now.

Matthew, I saw the article from last week. Quite frankly, he’s right. While there is a difference in the hard product between First and Business, there is little difference in the soft product. Take that and the fact that they rarely sell any F seats and you have an idea of why they don’t invest money into it. It’s no joke that First is employee class and that the bulk of the people in F are employees, so where is the incentive to improve the product?

I love a good F product like the next guy, but the reality is that it is becoming more and more of a niche product and that is not a market the US airlines really want to be a part of. With the likes of Emirates and Qatar, it’s a market they can’t even successfully compete in.

Rainey is known to say stupid things, but he’s right. He just has a bad way of delivering his message.

Fozz, you should have me on your podcast to talk about this. You and Seth can lambast me for not kissing the ring of the new United. I know we can’t rewind the clock, but there is a reason Delta’s numbers are so good and UA’s are so poor.

@CJ: Meh, I just don’t like Newark. And, I am not sure the points blogger comment makes sense, considering I have not taken a single mileage run in more than two years.

You think Delta’s numbers are better because they fly JFK-IAD? And you love Delta but take a dig on UA for cutting back on the F product, something DL dropped a long time ago. What kind of thought goes into drawing that conclusion??

The p.s. service isn’t going anywhere. That’s still a competitive market and UA moving it to EWR is not justified from a yield perspective at all. As for it having “tremendously deteriorated” in recent years, I can see how having a real flat-bed seat and AVOD sucks. Except not really. Meals are less good, to be sure, but you still get lounge access. Really a mixed bag there.

As for the partners, Most of those flights are pushing more O/D traffic, not connections down to IAD. Anywhere else can connect via IAD, ORD or though the multiple destinations their other codeshare partners (e.g. B6) offer.

@Seth: I never said that – Delta’s numbers are good because they offer a solid product, good service, and have lower legacy costs. I am not particularly interested now in Delta’s past or Untied’s past, but what is going on now. Like it or not, United still has F and will have F for the foreseeable future on the sUA 744 and 772 fleet. Since the product is going nowhere, is it wrong for me to question the CFO for trashing his carrier’s own product? Have you flown Global First recently? It’s not LH or LX or SQ F, but it’s much better than business.

I agree the p.s. service is going nowhere, but AVOD has always been available on p.s. and though the lie-flat seats are an improvement to the lounge chairs that preceded it, the lounge chairs were still very comfortable. The deterioration of meal service is most noticeable and frankly more important to me. But I credit UA for offering good service overall on this route and for ensuring 100% wi-fi connectivity, even at $22/flight.

Here is an internal United press release on the termination of service,

We plan to end our service between JFK (New York-Kennedy) and IAD on Oct. 25 and loaded the schedule change into our reservations system on Saturday morning. Two-thirds of traffic on the route is connecting traffic that does not generate sufficient yields. Industry capacity growth at JFK has made this worse.

We will continue to serve JFK from SFO and LAX. From IAD, we offer service to LGA (New York-LaGuardia) and EWR.

The adjustment is in line with the decisions we make every day to match supply with demand so that we produce returns that go beyond simply covering the cost of doing business. An appropriate match of supply with demand was a key driver behind our $1.1 billion profit last year and is a major reason why 2013 was the industry’s fourth consecutive year of profitability.